A few questions for Tim Brewer about using fuel injection in NASCAR

By Mike Smith (contact)

Thursday, Sept. 3, 2009 | 8:53 p.m.

Do you remember the last car you owned that had a carburetor? I do. It was a 1983 Ford Fairmont. It was a sluggish, but indestructible car that provided years of service shuttling my newsroom friends and myself to lunch every day.

Production vehicles abandoned carburetors quite some time ago, but NASCAR is just getting around to thinking about eliminating carburetors and moving to fuel injection. It’s about time. Comparing carburetors to fuel injection is like comparing a typewriter to a computer.

But this move isn’t without issues that NASCAR knows it will have to address. There are many legitimate reasons why considering a move to fuel injection has been a slow process for NASCAR.

Chief among them is the issue of cheating. Fuel injection is controlled by a computer and the sanctioning body is worried that this could present the opportunity for teams to use traction control or relay data to the crew chief during a race.

So how would NASCAR police such a move, how would it effect teams financially, and would it render the restrictor plate obsolete?

I decided to ask Tim Brewer, the technical expert for ESPN’s race broadcasts, for his insight on these questions.

Regarding the implementation of fuel injection, Brewer said: “I think they’re (NASCAR) just researching it right now. I think Rick Hendrick is working on a program for them. If you have fuel injection, it’s a lot more efficient engine and you’re going to hit a couple of stumbling blocks because you’re going to have a computer program chip to run the system.”

This could open up a can of worms, according to Brewer, because there are a lot of intelligent people who could write computer programs, which means there could be more people with the ability to help teams circumvent the rules.

In terms of the economic impact, Brewer said: “But it (fuel injection) would be something that would have to take an enormous amount of research and development on NASCAR’s part. And to throw it on the teams and have them then go back and re-do all of the dyno testing and everything they’d have to do to make that happen, in the economic situation we’re in right now, I don’t think that’s going to be a very good solution for the future.”

“But restrictor plates would be gone because they could limit the rate of fuel flow,” said Brewer. “And I don’t care how, if you put a restrictor plate on it or you control fuel management or what you do, you’re still going to have those packs of cars. Is it going to make the racing better? Who’s to say? Anytime you have restricted fuel flow and restricted airflow, you’re still going to have those packs of cars at Daytona and Talladega.”

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